“Do Not Call” compliance is expensive

We all know and hate the “do not call” registry from the Federal Trade Commission, right? The law had good intentions, but it has been pretty ineffective. Not everyone realizes how expensive it is to comply with it though. Here’s an announcement from the FTC announcing a price increase. It turns out that, if you are a law abiding marketing company and want to make some unsolicited calls, you have to pay $65/year to subscribe to the do-not-call numbers in a single areacode. At the moment, there are 317 areacodes (associated with geography), which would typically cost about $20k/year, or if you act now, you can get all areacodes for $17,765 per year. https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2019/08/most-telemarketer-fees-access-ftcs-national-do-not-call-registry?utm_source=govdelivery

So it is understandable that “small” telemarketing shops do not check this list. Perhaps if the list were cheaper, then there’d be fewer unsolicited calls? However, ironically, we do not really want telemarketers to access these numbers, right? So if the list were cheap, then we would likely get more telemarketers because people on that list think they’re safe from unsolicited calls so the’re more likely to answer. Whew!

It goes round and round. I still have no faith in the government to fix this. I just don’t see a way to regulate this. How would you define an “unsolicited telemarketing” call? I think we all know one when we hear it, but it’s hard to define in a law.

And I’m not sure if the telecommunications industry can fix this either. The carriers are focused upon YOUR satisfaction, which is good, but they’re not necessarily focused upon extermination, eradication, and obliteration of telemarketing like we are.

So that leaves a small, dedicated group of entrepreneurs who fight telemarketing because we want to eliminate the problem. We want to make unsolicited telemarketing and telephone scamming UNPROFITABLE by intercepting more-and-more of them with human-sounding bots. Remember – when you use the Jolly Roger Telephone service, you are helping everyone. When Jolly Roger intercepts YOUR telemarketers, they have less time to call the next person.

Thank you everyone for using the service and working with us to make this service effective, fun, goofy, whimsical, and entertaining. All of our customers have a great sense of humor (otherwise you would not be customers!) and I love you all!